Who do you aim to please? Your boss, your husband, your reputation, your bank account, your dog … yourself?
Anything or anyone placed ahead of God can become an idol. These may include things like,
- approval
- love
- comfort
- security
- significance
These seem innocuous, but they can ensnare us. They keep wanting more and more. Feeding an idol is a horrible, exhausting way to live.
In this article, we’ll first get a picture of what idol-worship may look like. It may be more common than you think. Then we’ll discover its antidote: growing in the fear of the Lord.
Meet an idol-worshiper.
Linda (name and some details have been changed) deeply desires that her Christian husband stop binge-drinking. His problem is obvious, but what’s hers?
She thinks that if she acts sweet (by picking up the kids’ toys before he returns home from work and by making nice dinners, for example), then he’d quit drinking and she’d get what she wants.
But no matter how sweet she is or how often she pleads with him to stop drinking, he continues to buy a 12 pack of beer and guzzle all of the beers when he comes home after work. Not every night … but often enough to cause her concern and fill her with fear.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a husband who makes wise choices. But when a desire becomes a demand, we have begun to make it an idol.
What’s her idol? Security. She says to herself, “I must have a godly and sober husband who cares for me and the kids, or I cannot be happy.”
You worship what you fear.
How do we tell if we are pleasing someone or something instead of God? Elyse Fitzpatrick nails it:
If she is willing to sin to obtain her goal or if she sins when she doesn’t get what she wants, then her desire has taken God’s place and she is functioning as an idolater.
Look back to the example of Linda. When her husband disappears into the garage with his 12-pack, she pouts and pleads, worries, and falls into self-pity. Her actions are understandable. Yet they are sins that she needs confess. This may not seem fair. We often sin in response to being sinned against.
A husband yells at his wife, the wife screams at the kid, the kid kicks the dog.
This dynamic may play out in your life too. It does in mine. When a friend failed to get back to me, and I feel ignored, I may sulk. When my husband seems more interested in TV than me, I may snap at him.
Choose better … please God only.
In her book Holy Fear, Christina Fox helps us to trade lesser fears for the fear of the Lord. Here are three ways she highlights.
1. Study God’s word.
To grow in the fear of the Lord, we must know him, and the very best way is to study God’s word. When we read scripture, we can ask ourselves, “What does this teach me about God?” The more we learn about who God is, the more we grow in our fear of him.
2. Remember God’s works.
As we recall that God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the prophet Jonah from the belly of the great fish, the apostle Paul from death time and time again, we grow in the fear of the Lord and desire to please him only. Great ways to remember God’s works today: worship with other believers on the Lord’s Day, sing praises to him, and share at the communion table.
3. Pray for greater fear.
Prayer helps us to depend on God more and ourselves less. “We find our hearts reshaped to want what God wants more than what we want,” Fox says. “We grow to want his glory and fame spread throughout the world and not our own. Indeed, prayer not only feeds and nourishes us, it transforms us.“
So who do you now aim to please?
God is jealous for our love. He hates your giving it to anyone or anything but him.
You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)
As we grow in the fear of the Lord, we will aim to please him, not a person or a thing like money, approval, security, or any lesser fear. When Linda came to realize that she wanted security above all things, even God, she agreed with the Lord that her desire was misdirected. She poured out her heart to the Lord, asking him to help her love him most of all.
Her husband still drinks sometimes, but less than before. Most importantly, she has a new attitude that God will provide her everything she really needs. The Lord is her safe place.
Such a great post, Lucy! Thank you for reminding us all of the things we can so easily slip into when we don’t put the Lord first. Bless you!
Thanks, Lynn. All of us worship idols at times. It’s sad and unfortunate. The Lord is our only real hope.
Lucy ~ This is a great post and I had an epiphany of late. In my case, I have struggled with opting for junk food instead of healthy food – for years, on and off. I have lost and gained a total of about 2-3 people so far. I have neglected having proper meals because ‘they take too long to make.’ I wasn’t eating much and what I did eat was not the best of choices – the result: weight gain because my body was always going into starvation mode. (Again.) The idol in my life is breaking God’s Word where it says to ‘love your neighbour AS YOURSELF.’ Some months back I struggled with, ‘How does one love one’s neighbour when they don’t even know how to love themselves (the way the God loves with the 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 kind of love?!)’ This was my biggest dilemma. I only knew how to hate and despise myself because that is what I was conditioned to feel about myself growing up ever since I was little, and I did it well. But then the epiphany came this past week … which reared itself when I made the choice to love myself by getting my health back, eating right, getting proper exercise – the first few days were awful – headaches, and then came the nightmares delivering the message, ‘You’re not worth it!’ Thus waking up in almost full panic attacks. It’s like the sub-conscious was stepping into my conscience.
To decide to love myself in action was inspired by a C.S. Lewis quote that went to the effect of, ‘if you act and show love like you already love someone when you don’t, the love will come.’ In other words, love like you already have affection for them and affection will come. I know these words are true because I have applied it in my life with others before and it works beautifully. And it dawned on me, why don’t I treat myself the same way?? And so … this past week, I have embarked on this journey to be kinder to myself, to be more loving and less judgmental of myself. I have chosen to not see myself the way my mother projected. Don’t get me wrong though, its hard – this renewing of the mind.
I endured years of abuse in my younger years by a parent who demeaned, degraded and humiliated, who made me feel worthless and unworthy of love or affection. It came to light that this thinking permeated and resided comfortably in my sub-conscious and until this week, I was unable to truly uproot this awful lie that has been telling me my whole life that I am not worth it. I’m not worthy of anything good, lovely, or wonderful. Not only was there this lie – but my mother’s recurring voice in my head saying, ‘You’re not worth it!’ (This is a statement that sums up how she treated me, everything she said or did communicated that I wasn’t worth anything.) I was living my life by what I was taught as a child – I was living it when I didn’t want to be and I didn’t know how to not live it – this was my ‘normal’ growing up. Now that I see the root – I can pluck it out. God is so good. He is faithful to complete the work He starts in us!
My sin was not loving myself in the sense of 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 – and it was not believing to the core of my being (the sub-conscious) that I am who God says I am and not who anyone else says I am (especially in a negative manner.) I choose to no longer see myself as the reflection of my mother’s rejection. I choose to no longer treat myself like I’m not worth it – when God clearly thinks I am. It’s like I’ve been walking around with a computer virus running in the background of my mind undetected, poisoning my life in the present without me really knowing what it was that was poisoning it. The ‘virus’ masked the truth – had me going in circles, making me too focused on self and junk food to ‘self-soothe.’ But … this week, I found the ‘virus’ – its been obliterated and there’s been a ‘re-boot.’ And now its up to me to guard my mind so that this ‘infection’ doesn’t infiltrate again.
The sin of idolatry can be so insidious because it can take many forms. I always thought my idol was food, but its not, it was a symptom. Mine was not loving myself, thus denying myself good nutrition and exercise … because ‘I wasn’t worth it.’ The food issues, weight issues, are the side effects of the real problem which was being (sub-consciously) too focused on being ‘worthless’ and thus I’d beat myself up by not looking after myself and indulging in comfort food (junk food) in attempt to make myself feel better – and being stuck there. .
Truth sets us free. Let the ‘reprogramming’ begin!!